Cloak and Dagger
by Paradoqz
Summary: The blade slid into the flesh, its sharpness balking at first and then easing in with a sickly wet sound.


TITLE: Cloak and Dagger

AUTHOR: Doqz  
>FANDOM: X-Men (Movieverse)<br>ARCHIVE: Please ask.  
>DISCLAIMER: Main characters mentioned belong to Marvel Inc . No profit is being made.<p>

*****

The blade slid into the flesh, its sharpness balking at first and then easing in with a sickly wet sound.

Smooth, practiced movement turned and twisted the knife; widening the wound and drawing out the blade, and then plunging it quickly into the victim's throat.

The murder took seconds, unseen and unheard in a city long used to death.

The footsteps of the killer faded quickly in the wind and soon only the body remained, twin wound spilling blood, unseeing eyes straining to see into the darkness.

***

David Langstrom disliked Washington.

He didn't mean that in the usual facile sense of professing to hate the atmosphere of the city, admitting coyly to being disgusted with its politics, inauthenticity, intricate rules, back-scratching and back-biting. Oh no.

Truth be told - he rather like The Game. He was, in fact, extremely good at it. Better than most professional politicians, when it came to that.

Assistant Deputy Director of Operations of Central Intelligence Agency had to be, after all. If he wanted to remain one.

No, he hated DC purely on its own merits.

The weather sucked and so did the food.

His suit jacket lay next to him, crumpled on the steps of the Capitol and he stared forlornly at the sodden mess of his sandwich. Swiping at the sweat running down the high forehead (that was getting higher all the time thanks to a slowly receding hairline) he contemplated just chucking the entire thing and procuring an ice-cream, Maddie be damned.

But he wouldn't of course. The old battle-axe was right, damn the woman and damn him for letting her stay on as the secretary after Chester retired.

It was going to be a long day. He'd need his protein. He winced and, gathering his courage, bit into the bread.

"Oh, that is just nasty…."

***

'Ey, bratok! Zakurit' ne naidetsya?"

Mikhail looked up with blank hostility at the jovial face grinning widely at him. Not that he needed to. The thick Chechen accent and the cheerful effrontery of accosting a Russian on Grozny's street left little doubt as to the identity of the man, even before Rasputin's deep, sunken eyes bore into his face.

"I ain't your 'bro,' blackass. So why don't you go peddle your ass to your bumboy President if you want a smoke, and back the fuck up off of me before I get irritated?"

The smile froze with the gold tooth gleaming dully, and the Chechen's hand made an incremental jerk toward the bejeweled kindjal, the traditional Highland dagger.

Mikhail allowed the corner of his mouth to quirk upward, in a nastily crooked smile, intensely away of how that made his check scar whiten. He rolled his shoulders suggestively and leaned forward slightly.

"Well?" Rasputin said, spitting with scornful nonchalance and missing the other's boot by inches. "You got something to say, djigit?"

The swarthy face paled farther at the tone, as Mikhail stressed mockingly the last word, making the title of 'warrior-hero' a deliberate insult.

The pause stretched for a long second and then the Chechen's hand relaxed, black eyes pausing for a moment as if taking a picture of Rasputin's face and then falling away from Mikhail's flat stare as he silently stalked off.

"Pacified, my ass." Rasputin spat again and resumed his trek.

They were everywhere in the city, the Kadyrovites, getting more brazen all the time.

The fuckers needed a hard slap-down every now and then to keep them in line, and to remind them whose hand was holding the leash.

Much like this entire shitty country, in fact.

He sighed and relaxed his neck muscles, breathing in the heavy, wet air that hung around him thick as honey.

And yet, even in the midst of the heat-wave and its avenues drenched with sun, he thought suddenly, Grozny still felt oppressively gray. A war city.

You could still see the wounds, the empty shells of the looted, burned out buildings, the pavement pockmarked with mortars and artillery shells, the people scurrying along the streets trying not to attract attention of the garrison forces

All except the Kadyrovites.

***

Selim made his way gingerly through the maw of the defanged dragon, gaping at the sky. Defanged for now, he thought, but one day… one day it will fly again, and scorch the sky. The dull roar of a Mig deafened him, as it barrel-rolled above, the pilot probably drunk. The plane disappeared quickly, leaving only a white trail of the jet stream and a dying echo as an ironic counterpoints to Selim's thoughts.

Defanged.

The entire country, much like the capital (Ichkeria, not Chechnya, the fucking Russians even stole their name!) was defanged. Tired, burned down, defeated.

The apocalyptic landscape of the urban ruin that Grozny has become surrounded him, cradling him as if he was a baby again safe in his mother's arms.

He wished he had the time to draw it. There was a kind of severe beauty in all of this; blackened husks of buildings clawing at the clouds and sullen faces of the people and uneasy eyes of the Russian soldiers.

Defanged but not enslaved. Never that.

Selim cut through the rubble of a demolished building, making his way toward the church with surety that would baffle most native citizens of Grozny.

Which he quite definitely not, thank God and His Prophet, blessings be Upon His name.

He squinted scornfully. Fucking Lowlanders. If it were up to them the entire country would have rolled over and licked the Moscow's boot from hill to tow at the first snap of the whip. His teip was the real Chechens, pure, the entire clan. Mountain men to the last.

When the first war started the Beshni men were among the first to come down from the hills to dig tunnels and sight sniper positions in Grozny. Throughout the siege they ranged the streets like wolf-packs ripping the Russian shambling tank columns to pieces And they were the last to fade from the capital and trek back home into the highlands, back to the mother-mountain, Beshni Lam, to fight the war from there the old way of raids and razziah.

The ghazavat, holy war. The Federals learned to fear them. crippled the name of their mountain and called them Besheniy, the Mad Ones.

Fuckers never understood and never would. What was madness but the voice of God? Madmen were as holy as dervishes. Even children knew that.

He was young then, during the first one, but already a man with a kill to his name. By the time Shamil forced Moscow to plead for peace he was 16.

It was good time, between the wars. For the teip and for the family. They had a slave even, Sergei the Bignose, until he died from tuberculosis. Selim frowned. Winter of 1997, it was. Or maybe 1998. Just before the Russians came back.

One handed, his arm keeping careful grip on the Toshiba, he fished out a cigarette from the almost-empty pack and lit the match to it with a motion so practiced that it didn't even require thought.

He stopped in the shadow of the renovated Khruschevka, one of the cookie-cuter 5-storied buildings that used to dot the entire city and pulled in a lung-full of nicotine, the half-lidded eyes scanning the street carefully.

It seemed empty, but you didn't survive two wars by trusting first impressions. The Federals had gotten almost good by the end of the war. And now… now there were the Rats.

If he sensed anything wrong, anything at all he would cut his losses and fade. He should anyway. Oleg was an old wolf, the last of their cell besides Selim hiimself and the best.

He had trained in Afghanistan camps before the first war, met with the Sheik himself!

Gutted like a fish last week. Left to bleed out in a dirty alley meters outside his house. It was a professional hit, too. Precise. He probably never heard them coming. And Oleg was good. Very good.

Selim should have split as soon as he had heard. That was the smart play.

But it didn't add up, not really. If it was the Federals, the spetsnaz – they would have taken Oleg alive.

More likely just a revenge killing. Spetznaz would get drunk sometimes and go out hunting. Keeping the natives in line with the judicious executions of those who caught their eye as being trouble. Reminding who ruled here now.

Or maybe it was the Rats. There were many former mujahedeen among the Kadyrovites now. Many old fighters, former brothers.

Or former enemies, for that matter. The war gave rise to enough new bloodfeuds, and didn't heal many of the old.

Oleg.

Selim would miss him in the days to come. He had counted heavily on his network of contacts on the road to Afghanistan. And on his introduction once there.

But, if anything, his death made the recovery of the drop all the more essential. He would NOT come to the Sheik empty-handed. He would NOT!

Besides, his hand sneaked toward his jacket, and he forced it still. He had an ace in the hole.

Selim took a deep breath and forced the calm upon himself, as he looked the terrain over again.

He knew this street almost as well as he had known his father's house.

Through the two sieges he, and the rest of Beshni fighters, learned the lay of the city better than people who had lived here their entire lives. Knowledge meant survival after all.

Since he's been back he made a point of noting the changes. There weren't many.

Ramzan was trying to rebuild the city and, when he wasn't busy stealing the country blind, making some progress. But it was slow going and, like his pig-dog of a father, Ramzan was trying to do it on the cheap. When he was done Grozny would look almost as ugly as it did under the Communists.

Selim grinned, the thin lips quirking around the cigarette. He went by the great big new mosque that had been unveiled in the center of town with such great fanfare.

Ugliest fucking thing he's ever seen in his life.

Go ahead, Ramzan, you fucker, try to ride the wolf. All of them ran to God, in the end. But nobody was buying Kadyrov's sudden conversion. And one day… Oh, one day.

But not yet. The dragon was defanged for now.

Mostly. He patted his inside pocket and wet his lips, the tongue darting in and out snake-quick.

Well…

Inshallah. He sighed and stepped out of the shadow, counting softly under his breath to slow down the suddenly hammering heart. Making his way across, toward the church, he took take care not to hurry and bent slightly to drop a handful of bills into the lap of a blind drunk sitting cross-legged at the steps. The bum muttered something reaching out his hand in benediction and Selim nodded and paused slightly, not really listening to his blubbering thanks.

There were many of them thronging the roads. Cripples of the war, missing limbs or eyes of minds. And giving alms was a duty of a good Muslim as decreed by the Prophet.

But mostly it demonstrated his unconcern to whoever might be watching. Just another passerby, reveling in his own generosity and superiority over a pathetic drunk.

It was all about patience in the end. Waiting for the right time. And the Chechens could wait. Even if they had to wait another sixty years.

Let the Russians think they won.

Selim's teeth shone bare for a second in a wolf's snarl, before he carefully smothered the expression and disappeared inside the church.

***

The problem with president McKenna was, Langstrom thought idly poking his finger with a toothpick, that he was a fucking pussy.

Not in a political sense, oh no. He was as vicious and bloodthirsty as anyone when it came to political arena. More than most if anything, considering that he came up in Chicago. But he was a physical coward and from that many problems followed.

He wondered sometimes if it was always there, or whether it started after The Incident.

Of course that was irrelevant in many respects.

Xavier had demonstrated that he and his 'students' could get to the president of the United States at any time. That won the game right then and there.

Langstrom smiled and nodded, not really hearing what Ryan was saying.

He almost wished Xavier would try to pull that shit again. Many things changed since Secret Service began to take mutants seriously.

And a spectacular failure might help the President sleep at night, perhaps even forego going on midnight walks to check up on his children.

He gritted his teeth, fighting back the sudden white-hot spike of rage.

He had liked McKenna, godammit! The guy might not have the battle courage, but he was a superb mind and a clever politician, a shark. And America needed somebody like that, now more than ever.

He was from the Midwest, spent his summers working on his Aunt's farm in North Dakota. He knew them, the 'flyover country.' Knew their strength and weaknesses, their steadfastness, and their myopia, their self-righteousness assumption of moral superiority and their unstinting generosity.

Knew them and loved them and despaired of them.

He understood the temptation, the ever-beckoning mirage of isolationism that seemed to be imbedded bone-deep in their psyche.

The desire to just be left alone by the universe, to dream an America which could be the Shining City on the Hill, alone in perfection, apart forever from the insanities and killing madness of the world beyond its shores.

What absolute bunk.

Ever since the Russians folded, seemingly within a week, like a cheap suit, the USA was taking a holiday from History. They had won after all.

There were no longer any bogey-men left hiding in the closet. One couldn't seriously ask the superpower to be wary of a few desert tribesmen with delusions of grandeur or of neer-do-wells like China.

Given time the rest of the world would come around. It wasn't up to the US to play the world policeman.

Once, Langstrom thought that McKenna was able to see past that. He seemed to be blazing hot those first years. Brazenly breaking his campaign promises and pushing the US influence outward.

There were whispers of a new campaign in the Gulf, to finish off the old monster in Baghdad. Negotiations with a slew of tin-pot despots throughout Africa and Central Asia, seemed to herald the new age, with American bases squeezing Russia and China into their respective corners.

All for naught in the end. The first decade of the new century turned out to be a twin of the last decade of the old. The American colossus, after briefly showing signs of waking, went back to its perpetual slumber. Waiting perhaps for another blow to shake it out of its stupor.

And it was only the matter of time, Langstrom knew. The question was only who was going to play the role of new Yamamoto. When, not if.

The knuckles whitened as he gripped the toothpick. Well, it was not going to happen on his goddamn watch. He'll see them all dead, before he'd allow fucking Xavier run the country into the ground.

He smiled at the man across from him, an expression that didn't reach his eyes.

Ryan, earnest and passionate, was still yammering on, so caught up in his own rightness and righteousness that it didn't occur to him to worry whether he was being listened to.

Ryan, clean cut and boyish, one of McKenna's blue-eyed kids. The New Wave.

The fucking problem in a nutshell.

Most of the old sharks that McKenna picked up on his march to Washington were gone. Resigning in disgust or eased out.

Those who stayed were old Chicago hands, who knew a good thing when they saw it and weren't about to let ideals or national security priorities wreck it for them. They got their plum offices, bribed with sinecures and keys to the machine. They were busy working the increasingly recalcriant Congress to push through the latest of McKenna insanities, dreamt up by the fanatics like Ryan.

Langstrom remembered quite clearly a perversely enjoyable afternoon he spent immersed in a vivid daydream of shopping Ryan to some friends in Egyptian Mukhbarat, with the instructions that leaving traces was not a problem and tapes of the process would be appreciated.

He could be surprisingly comfortable, he thought, with an idea of a succession of lazy Sunday afternoon spent watching Ryan being violated in a variety of ways by a largish gentleman named Akbar and his pet goat.

He pulled himself away from the daydream with some difficulty. It was a bad day that. He still had trouble believing it – how the hell did they ram the 'Janissary Bill' through Congress?

Bad days. Too much, too soon. Liberty Island, Stryker, Columbia University, San Diego…

The entire country went collectively bug-fuck retarded, and only now was beginning to wake up. Barely.

He glanced up at Ryant again. Pure, idealistic, photogenic.

Retard.

The Mutant Question was the topic of the day now. It seemed to escape people that the mutants weren't a real force yet. Some day, perhaps. A generation, maybe two – yes.

Now? Just a tool, whether they wished it or not.

There simply weren't enough of them to coalesce in a movement of their own, no matter how often Magneto got his purple-caped ass kicked in a televised manner.

Just a tool to be used by older interests, established and strong, by the entrenched ideas and old hates. Or Ideals.

Maybe a million mutants worldwide, separated by language, race, ideas and religion.

Religion.

Langstrom grinned sourly. Even the New Wavers were beginning to come around to the idea that the future wasn't going to be a secularist paradise.

He supposed it wasn't surprising. When every time you turned on the TV you saw a man fly or summon lightening, or fight a dinosaur to a standstill in the middle of Manhattan…

He remembered trying to explain it to Ryan once. It wasn't after all that the other man was stupid. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Langstrom, rather suspected that intellectually Ryan understood the situation. It just wasn't real to him on an emotional, instinctual level.

He couldn't really relate to the people away from the computer projections and extrapolations of the mutant population growth, away from the pseudo-academic discussions of evolution and inevitability of progress…

Couldn't understand, not really, not in his bones, the pressure of dealing with the world that was more uncertain all the time, with the new age of Chaos, with the universe where Change ruled supreme and unstoppablem where nothing at all seemed stable or safe.

'Last time we went through that,' Langstrom had told him, 'a new religion was born and the ghost of Marxism still haunts us. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before a new messiah dictated newest revelations.'

But so far the people flocked to the old Gods. Seeking answers, seeking certainty, seeking refuge.

The churches were packed these days and world grew stranger every day.

The new pope, his pacific name aside, seemed to be of a more militant bent than old one. And seemed to have fewer inhibitions about making Vatican's word and deed overtly felt.

Langstrom's reports made for a surreal reading these days.

Two weeks ago a station chief in Nigeria, wrote him asking for instructions when Dominicans came to her with information on the rebel-run slave trade ring.

Rebels who coincidently happened to be primarily Muslim.

She hinted that she had suspicions about a timely death of one of their local point men.

Fuckig Dominincans, for Christ's sake.

Langford had drunk deep from the Bad Bottle that day.

Domini Canii. The Hounds of God. They were hunting again, straining at the leash. In Asia it was the Jesuits, ranging from Madripoor to Moscow, afire again with a reborn Grand Dream of turning China into a Catholic Kingdom.

Strange days and getting stranger by the day.

He tried hard not to think about The Chaste and their particular bailiwick. Well, he supposed, after all if anyone was qualified to police the…

God.

And if the Catholics were bad enough, he had long since but given up on keeping track of the Evangelicals, forging intrepidly forth in their battle for the souls of the world.

Can't let the Papists have the upper hand, after all.

Ryan had smiled at him back then. Langstrom could see the amused condescension in his eyes.

He had tried. God knows, he swallowed his pride and rage and tried.

"Does the name Kabaka mean anything to you, Mr. Ryan?"

Ryan frowned. "The Chairman of New Orleans' chapter of Amnesty International?"

"Not exactly, no. In the 1880's he was the Big Chief, the God-King of Buganda. A compact little empire in Central Africa."

"Ah." Ryan's eyed had began to glaze over.

"Yes. They were doing rather well. Then the missionaries arrived. Muslims, Anglicans and Catholics .

Within ten years, the Kabaka had been overthrown, and a four-cornered civil war was underway. The Anglicans won eventually, mostly due to a British gentleman adventurer, a Maxim machine gun and the British Imperial East Africa Company"

He hadn't gotten it.

Birth pangs of a new era, he had said, waving airily. It would pass. Can't make omelet without…

Fuck. He had almost vomited onto Ryan's carefully casual jeans-blazer combo.

It's like they had a mental block. They seemed to be under the impression that if the US just stepped back and stopped meddling, the world would magically right itself, flowering into a beautiful commune of peaceful, harmonious coexistence.

The concept of another force filling the vacuum appeared to have completely eluded them.

He could understand an Iowan corn farmer, figuring that the policy which worked and made for good neighbor relations would work on global scale.

But Ryan had fucking degree from the fucking Hahvahd in International Relations!

It wasn't just the mad monks running around playing Crusade. And it wasn't just that fact that mutants were a whole lot more powerful than Maxim guns.

Russia and China were skirmishing across Asia, buying up the client kingdoms by the bushel and arming madmen, replaying the Great Game where only the players ever changed, but not the stakes.

Pakistan and India were snarling at each other over the nuke-tipped fangs, Iran and the Taliban were clashing across their border in what increasingly resembled pitched battles.

Britain still tried to punch out of its weight and imagine that it was the shadow arbiter, that it could still sway the scale by placing the judicious finger on it at just the right time.

Couldn't blame them really. Somebody had to play the adult.

Mere anarchy was loosed upon the world, and America was taking a siesta.

The trend was there before him of course, but McKenna's sudden collapse transformed it into a flood. On the back of his 'progressive' mutant policies the changes were implemented that…

Again and again Langstrom's mind came back to the 'Janissary Bill.' That was the denouncement and the pinnacle.

It was just so wonderfully emblematic of the entire farce that this Administration has become.

It seemed so clean and pretty on paper. Who could argue, after all, with the moral authority of undersigning the UN ban on militarization of mutants. And, of course, the next logical step was the end of all of the US R&D concerning weaponizing the mutant powers for military purposes.

The moral purity demanded it.

Madness.

Insanity at best.

Outright treason at worst.

The McKenna Administration was religiously complying with the requirements too. Not that they would have had any choice.

The US wasn't Russia or India. The spotlight was glaring and unforgiving.

And the damage to the US national security was incalculable. The termination of Tearaway alone…

Quite apart from that, for a time, the United States verged on the cusp of loosing the primacy in the entire field of genetic research into the X-Gene. The jihad against the 'military-eugenic' complex proved remarkably versatile at ascribing potential military applications to a whole slew of genetic research programs.

American partners in this brave new world proved rather less concerned with the potential UN moralizing or rebukes.

One had to be particularly effective in self-delusion to still believe that Chinese or North Korean programs were aimed purely at civilian and industrial development of the potential of their mutant populations.

Hell, even Iraq, suddenly flush in the post-sanctions era, was crowing to the world about its gigantic strides in mutant militarization programs. Mostly in an attempt to bluff Teheran, but…

At this point the number of states not involved in weaponizing mutants could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Langstrom smiled thinly and stuck the toothpick back between his teeth.  
>It was fortunate, all things considered, that despite all of McKenna's efforts the US was not on that short list.<p>

The law of unintended consequences. He has become quite a fervent fan of that particular quirk of nature, in the last decade.

While adventurism overseas was frowned upon, the electorate appeared remarkably sanguine about the increasing ties between the NAFTA states.

Cooperation there, in fact, was proceeding at such frenetic pace and advanced to such extent that the American Right was beginning to loudly mutter about surrendered sovereignity, and the Canadian Left was screaming about Yanqui imperialism.

Mexico…

Well, nobody cared much about what Mexico thought.

Meanwhile the benefits accrued and opportunities were there to be seized. Certainly Ottawa, upon consideration, had deemed the prospect of the American military umbrella developing an X-sized hole in it to be rather undesirable.

Langstrom shuddered remembering the harrowing 18-20 hour workdays of shifting as many programs as he could north of the border, away from prying eyes of Congress and the White House.

Canada didn't rank high on anybody's radar. Somehow the world just chuckled indulgently when it instituted its Flights programs. Yes, it was tied to the defense department, but it was Canada! Surely you can't be serious!

And the things one could hide in the byzantine layers of the morass of Mexican government were best not even thought of.

Even more important, perhaps, was another consequence of the J-Bill.

As if waking up after a bender, the country began to back away from the decisions made in the heat of overreaction and startedto deal with the hangover.

Soon enough the bill would be repealed, but in the interim, to make up for the damage, the funding was being channeled into the technological alternatives to the genetic challenge posed by the mutants.

The future was with the mutants, Langstrom knew. It was only a matter of time. Perhaps sooner than later an equivalent of Tearaway would succeed in speeding evolution along, turning 'flatscans' into… something else en masse.

But for the time being technology was the way to bet. All else was a long-term investment.

And now the purse strings were beginning to loosen. He grinned tautly around the toothpick. In direct proportion to McKenna's falling poll numbers. What a coincidence that.

Most of it still went to the Navy. And the Marines of course, with their unequaled marketing department.

Army was still starved, downsized yet again as the garrisons halved and halved again in Europe and Japan.

And as always in peacetime the sheer thought of having spies who consorted with Bad People was unpalatable to the extreme for the Powers The Be.

But here too, a curse could be turned into a blessing. The tide of green has long since dried to a trickle when it came to the Company.

The bulk went to the NSA and the SHIELD. Especially the latter, it being the newest darling of DC.

Langstrom's smile widened, his canines showing and gleaming with wet brightness for a second.

Nick Fury was good, as good as they came, but he was trapped in his own success. Too much money – God, what a problem to have.

But money brought attention and temptation.

SHIELD was drowning in gadgets, slowly turning simply into another data-sifting bureaucratic muddle, unable to do anything mildly questionable under the unforgiving lenses of the Congressional oversight.

Soon enough destined to play second fiddle to No Such Agency.

CIA – dishonored, crippled and starved from the Iran-Contra Debacle on through the late 1990s – went the other way.

Under Chester Whelan it went back, remembering itself, recalling the bad days, mad days, old days of the OSS.

The Firm was hungry again. Overlooked and liking it that way. Stripped down to the bone and muscle, and nasty with it.

People, not microchips, ware the engine of the spook business Whelan had often said and Langstrom never forgot.

Slowly but surely new networks arose and old ones were painstakingly rebuilt throughout the world.

Quietly, the best among the multitude of the cast-off soldiers and marines were approached. Bitter but patriotic still, most jumped at the opportunity they may have disdained before to work for the spooks, and the Agency's non-existent 'Army of North Virginia' grew and began to make its presence felt.

The fact that the CIA had a private paramilitary force, wasn't a secret of course. Nothing in Washington was, really.

In his darkest nightmares Langstrom imagined some bright spark actually proving ANV's existence and tying it to Langley. ANV's officers in Ollie North's seat…

It was enough to make him have kittens. The Wavers would use it to the hilt and, with the current mood of DC, he'd be crucified, and the Firm along with him. At best it would take the Company another decade to recover.

But what choice was there?

Someone had to look after Uncle Sam, and it might as well be them.

Navy guarded the seas and stared down China. Army tried to survive the peacetime and the Marines reverted to fighting State Department's Banana Wars from Panama to Chile.

Meanwhile the CIA took care of keeping the US safe and the world from exploding. Langstrom glanced at Ryan briefly and his toothpick snapped under the sudden pressure.

Somebody had to.

***

Mikhail stopped and slipped another cigarette from the pack, twirling it in his fingers as he considered his next move. He wasn't really a smoker, like most guys he picked up the habit in the service, but unlike most for him it remained something to take or leave.

He had seen too many lieutenants and fresh-faced conscripts, with their brains leaking out through their ears, eyes opened in an eternal surprise by a sniper bullet that came out of the pitch-black Chechnya night, zeroing in on the flicker of a cigarette.

War fed on your mistakes, knew all your weaknesses. It made little sense to help it out.

Still the cigarettes gave him something to do with his hands, and occasionally the tobacco was a great aide in thinking the situation through.

He wasn't wild about this op from the start. It had the smell of improvisation. Not that this was anything new. Making bricks without straw, that was the FSB way.

He grinned sourly and spat. Vazhin and the GRU were all the rage now. The Golden fucking Boy of Kremlin. Bastard. It's easy to be the hero on the cheap, when you got the Americans hand-feeding you the info. Try doing it on your own one day, without somebody pre-chewing the op for you, and without calling in the FSB assets when the shit hit the fan.

Rasputin sighed. The rivalry between the services predated his own birth, stretching back to the time when FSB was still spelt K G B.

But in the wake of the USSR's crash, KGB went to shit, with most of the old school skinning out to establish their own empires in business or underworld.

Others went into politics. Hell, one of their formerly own was warming the Kremlin's toilets at this very moment. Proving to be only marginally less useless than the rest of the politicians.

On the other hand Military Intelligence, the bloody GRU, somehow managed to hang on to most of their operatives. And with Vazhin coming in and his connections to the Ami…

Fucking Americans.

No guts, no staying power, no brains.  
>And worst of all no patience.<p>

That was the real problem. They crowed about winning the Cold War, they threw around nicely meaningless phrases like 'New World Order,' they humiliated Russia in Serbia and Iraq.

And they grew bored and sullen, took their toys and went back home. Leaving Russia with its ass in the breeze, to clean up their mess.

Sure, let the Evil Empire, broke and busted, hold back the fucking Chinks and the Muj. Wouldn't be the first time.

When it came down to the wire it was always on the poor bloody Ivan to pull the West out of its own govno.

Genghis, Napoleon, Hitler… In the end it was always on Russia to stop the flood. Well, fuck it. We weathered out the shitstorms before, we'll do it again. Patience was one commodity that Rodina was never short on.

Just look at Chechnya.

Officially the war over, the province pacified and returned into the loving embrace of the Russian Federation, the money pouring in from Moscow for reconstruction and the soldiers streaming out, replaced by the regular compliment of the police troops and local constabulary.

In reality it was a bloody mess and always would be. Already the Kadyrov's milita was clashing with Dagestan's police, kidnapping and robbing and trading slaves. All the traditional hobbies of the proud Chechen people.

Rasputin shook his head in weary disgust.

'Local constabulary.'

Kadyrov the Elder had been just another hill bandit turned jihadi who threw his chips in with the Federals when he smelt which way the wind was blowing. Well, he got his opportunistic ass blown up into bite sized chunks for it, along with the then Russian commander of the garrison forces. Good riddance. But at least Akhmad was smart.

His son was just another thug.

But there was no one else, and so Kremlin turned over what was left of the country to him and called it peace.

Ramzan. Barely thirty and as much polish as the contents of his outhouse. The fucking President of Chechnya.

Mikhail squinted cynically staring at the jeep parked down the street, full of bearded young men who might have come out of Tolstoy's tale about picturesque life among the hillmen of Caucusus. This entire fucking shirt-hole of a country hadn't changed a bit since they were chasing each other around the mountains with fucking spears. They just got better toys.

Bandoliers crossing their chests, camo (Russian and Turskish) clashing with tribal wear and Rolexes, AKs and M16s…

Bunch of show-offs.

Which didn't mean they weren't dangerous.

It was clowns like these, after all, that slaughtered the entire Maikop Brigade on that fateful New Year's eve.

Mikhail blinked away the sudden images of the dead kids, 18-year old conscripts who barely been taught to march in line. The dead laying in rows and clumps crowding the depot and the street outside. Their dicks cut off and stuffed in their mouths, gaps where the gold fillings have been torn out.

The First War. The horror and shame of it.

He remembered it all.

The human shields in the windows of the Presidential Palace turned into a fortress. A smiling girl pulling the cord on the explosive belt right in the middle of a MASH.

The humiliation of it all. The Red Army brought to heel by a bunch of mountain yokels. The world could barely stifle its glee.

Nobody cared that the Chechens were being armed by Turkey, that the Brits was obviously spying for them, that ghazis from Jordan to Morocco were streaming into the country.

Nobody remembered that the old Army, the one that for a century kept half the world trembling in fear and respect, had trained half of these 'yokels'.

The Chechens picked the right time, one had to give them that.

Mikhail smiled grimly. So what. It all turned out the same in the end.

This wasn't 'Stan. This time they finished the job.

The wind carried a sound of laughter from the jeep and his smile slid off his face.

Victory. The word tasted of ashes in his mouth. Kadyrov would keep the peace and kneel to Kremlin, and Moscow would turn the blind eye to the hand he had long since glued to the till.

Everyone was happy enough with the arrangement.

And, after all, his was the biggest gang left standing.

Rasputin glowered at the militiamen, the cigarette disintegrating as his fingers turned to bone-claws, stretching hungrily, unbendingly as if he could feel the throats snapping in his grip.

The big fish were dead or running, but for all he knew some of the animals that bled his country for a decade were right there, laughing. Enjoying the amnesty under the Kadyrov's colors, while the Russians streamed north, out of 'stabilized' Chechnya.

They should have taken the page from Stalin's book and herded the lot of them across the Urals. This wasn't over. Never would be. They were just waiting. A generation. Two.

And then again the blood would flow. Russian blood. And maternity wards or schools would burn again so that another Mafioso hiding behind a holy book could have his 'freedom.'

Patience, he thought, and breathed deep.

It was all about patience in the end. We've ground them under the heel before, for 200 years we've taught them to behave. What's another go. And maybe the next time we'll learn not to stop half-way.

He shook himself.

All of that was very nice but didn't make his situation seem any better. In fact he had an unpleasant feeling one gets just before being subjected to a vigorous group rape.

His own fault for agreeing to this, really. But what else was new. Get a hard job done well and naturally your reward would be an even shittier job.

Way of the world.

Even with the pull-out there were still enough FSB assets on the ground that would back him, if he had wanted. However, it was strongly suggested to him to keep this low profile.

He understood well enough. Too many things could go wrong on this. More, in fact, could go wring than right.

If the West found out that FSB got a hold of the documentation on the Hound process, it would be bad.

If they found out that FSB than proceeded to lose it and were on the verge of letting it disappear into Afghani terror camps…

Actually if they let it happen, the West's reaction would be the least of Russia's problem, Rasputin thought moodily.

The image of entire units of monsters like Saidullayev, given the power of near-Gods, made his blood run cold.

If it was up to him he'd have the entire fucking service on this case. But it wasn't up to him, of course. Security concerns.

Fucking PC bullshit.

The brass had no idea who in the Service had been bought, that's all. Same old, same motherfucking old. Who was on the Ami payroll? Who was singing into Vazhin's ear?

This had been FSB's op from the start. If it went sideways on them, they would take the entire blame.

On the other hand if they pulled it out of the kaak… God knows they needed a win. After Vazhin's coup with Saidullayev…

Mikhail let out an unwilling chuckle. He was in Moscow when the Chechen went down for good and the memory of the incredulous look on Vazhin's face when the fucker was handed over to him for the asking was still one of his favorite memories.

It took a while, but Saidullayev broke in the end. And, even with the word out on his capture, and his people scattering, he gave up enough to finish off most of the Moscow network.

Fuck, unless Mikhail missed his guess, he was still talking up a storm. Not for nothing that GRU was suddenly so well informed about the Taliban.

Up ahead the Kadyrovites were still laughing, but they were veterans, that much was clear.

The place for the picket was chosen with care and despite the loose demeanor they were keeping the perimeter under constant observation.

And he was getting to close to the objective to be slowed down. Not to mention that any one of these newly-made allies might be double dicking and holding hands with the 'dead-enders.'

No. It was time.

Mikhail sighed and braced himself.

The s h i f t made him nauseous, as always, and he gritted his teeth as he slipped into no-Place, making the world go gray and almost-away. The vomit was burning his throat for and he had to concentrate before he forced it back with an effort of will and breathed deep.

The time stretched, he could feel it slow down and sag around him.

Fuck.

Every goddamn time.

Every time he made the passage, he cursed his brother.

Trust Petka to get the good deal out of this mutant shit. And, inevitably, promptly to screw it up. Whoring himself to the mob and then making for America.

Well, he was always an asshole.

Mikhail closed his eyes and cut his rambling coldly off, recognizing it for what it was. He couldn't afford panic or wasted time.

The pressure, the pull of the dimensions surrounded him, pushing down on him, pulling away at him, taring at his self.

The temptation and the threat.

The Spiral of the multiverse called out its siren song at him; begging and offering and screaming and beguiling. All it would take was another s h i f t. All it would take was another minute step sideways.

His teeth ground against each other as he pulled up his shield, gasping under the strain, and stepped forward, away from the Spiral and toward the jeep.

A step.

Another.

And another.

Each was slightly easier, each took him an inch away from the Spiral's call.

Away. Step by step away. Away from it.

For There The Monsters Dwelt. And Madness.

His eyes still closed he called up his sister's face, anchoring himself through her to this shitty world.

Bleeding, cruel, crying, hurting world.

His. HIS!

He hoped Snowflake was all right. She was the only one in the family who was worth a crap.

Another step.

Ilyana's face grinned whitely in his mind's eye and she beckoned at him, tugging him forward, her small hand dwarfed by his, drowning in his desperate grip.

A step. Forward, always forward.

One more, and he felt the pressure ease to a bearable roar, the blood thundering in his ears, his palms bleeding where his nails dug through the skin.

He breathed out and opened his eyes, holding the equilibrium in his mind like a precious, fragile thing it was.

Any give and he would slide back or worse – sideways.  
>Any more focus and he would slip out of the no-Place.<p>

He spat, clearing his throat, which felt scratchy and torn.

Just another day in the life, he grinned sourly and ghosted by the Kadyrovites, their shades looking right through him, unaware. Blind.

He walked through them and into a wall, ignoring the chilling bite as he slid through the reflection of the City, hunting.

Time was running out.

***

Selim paced, circling the clattered hall. The cracks in the onion dome of the church gaped down on him with the jagged, misshapen stars.

He felt caged and he missed the reassuring solidity of Oleg at his back. He missed his uncanny sense of wrongness, his instinct that saved all of their asses time after time, when he'd smell a trap where none would suspect one.

Of course he didn't smell the last one.

Well, that was life. Oleg himself had said it. There was always someone better.

Of course a week ago Selim would swear on the hundred names of God that anyone who thought he could get a drop on Oleg would have to be a fucking ghost.

Fuck.

He was scared, he suddenly realized. Scared.

He swallowed, assessing the situation as dispassionately as he could.

Only idiots were fearless and they didn't last long.

Fear was a part of life. Fear was an instinct, a voice from your subconscious, warning you to beware. And those who ignored it died ugly and first.

And every instinct that Selim had was telling him to cut his losses and fade. Get out and do it now.

Oleg was dead. Ibrahim was executed by the remnants of Saidullayev's group when he tried to recruit them.

The Russian was late.

And Selim's skin was crawling with that sticky, cold anticipation that he hasn't felt since Aldi.

It was time to disappear. He knew it, deep in his bones he knew it.

He palmed his worry beads and let the string run through his fingers, mouthing the familiar words of the Shahadah by route. "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet. Whatever is to be, will be. Inshallah."

If he was going to die here, he would. But as Allah was his shield and witness, he was not going south empty-handed just because of a bad feeling.

And besides, there was still his little trump card.

His hand brushed the pocket again and he smiled thinly, eyes hooded with memories.

Aldi. It was a freezing February night when he sneaked in, Oleg stalking a silent menace by his side. They knew something was wrong. The wails echoed down the valley. He had seen sacked villages before. But.

The Russian SWAT, mobilized for the 'police action' from across the country… the villagers said they went mad. There weren't even any mujahadeen there. They shelled it just before the storm and then…

Looting, sweeping the town and shooting people and laughing as they bayoneted a grandmother and raped Ibrahim's sister, heavy with child.

He felt this same kind of cold crawl then as he looked into Aisha's face. God was looking back at him through her eyes, he could feel his Presence.

She went Shahid within a week. Cleansing dishonor with blood. Doubly-blessed for she had gifted her unborn child with martyrdom as well. They said the belt she'd worn made the explosion so powerful that it flipped over an armored truck.

Aldi.

It was there that the Imam found them and gave them the…

A faint scraping noise sent him body in action an eternity before his conscious mind processed the signals. The Makarov's weight was feather light in his hand as he wheeled, bringing the heavy Russian pistol to bear in a familiar, easy movement.

"Whoa!" Petrenko raised his hands up in the mock surrender and stepped back. "Easy there, Rambo."

Selim swallowed back a curse and nodded curtly at his contact. "You are late."

"Yes, well. I'm not exactly working on my own schedule, you know." Petrenko cultured Leningrad accent sounded strange to Selim's ears. It was somehow blasphemous, worse than incongruous here and now in the ruins of this church, in the middle of Grozny.

"Where are your friends."

Selim smiled blandly. "Around."

The FSB turncoat raised his eyebrow, seemingly unworried about the gun still pointed at him and shrugged. "Well? We in business?"

Selim thought about demanding to see the package, but before he could Petrenko just smiled, a faint contempt in his eyes, and flipped the envelope at him, forcing Selim to grab for it awkwardly, moving the gun away from the Russian.

"You want to check it?" Petrenko nodded slightly at the laptop humming dully on the rotting bench next to Selim.

"Do you?" The Chechen shot back.

"You bet your ass, kid." The Russian grinned and with the speed startling in the man his size moved toward the computer. Punching in the rapid succession of numbers he tapped his fingers impatiently, waiting for the wireless to connect.

His unconcern with Selim standing at his back, made the younger man's temper flare for a second, but he controlled it. Never waste energy on useless tantrums. His father taught him that.

"Well, well." The Fed straightened, closing the windows with an easy movement of the mouse. "All in order. That's what I like dealing you people. You don't stint on the money."

He squinted at Selim, still standing with the envelope in one hand and the gun in the other.

"You going to run the data?"

Selim wondered for a second if Petrenko knew that no one in his cell could even come close to verifying the information they were buying.

They bluffed him, Ibrahim (who'd had a degree in Russian literature) posing as a biology student. Whether or not the FSB man bought it, Selim still didn't know.

He smiled at him nastily and fingered the envelope, brushing the brown paper with his thumb. "Why? You don't think I trust you?"

His smile widened a fraction. "And besides it doesn't matter. You know the Sheik will find you anywhere if you fuck us."

Petrenko grinned again, feigning unconcern, but Selim knew better. He could see it in his eyes. The Russian knew the truth of his words.

"Don't worry, kid…"

The air behind Petrenko shimmered suddenly and Selim felt a brief stabbing pain, splitting his head, making it hard to think. And then a man stepped out of nowhere, his smile feral and quite mad.

A ghost…

But ghosts didn't wield silenced Berettas, and then Petrenko was falling, a stupid expression of surprise on his flat Slav face, the hole in his head shining wetly.

He didn't remember leaping. As always in the fight time went funny on him, contracting and stretching, his mind focusing on strangest things.

The Russian… he had to be Spetznaz… fuck he was fast… must have done Oleg… shit, shit… reload, duck… two hands, two hands Selim you idiot…

His hand suddenly cleared and he fumbled the reload, the clip slipping through his fingers as he remembered the envelope.

The curse ripped past his lips, vile and, for some reason in Russian, the words tumbling over each other.

The Russian laughed and swore back at him.

The brown square was lying right there in the pew, he could see it, but he would never make it. And the time was against him.

He screamed his frustration then, the thin terrifying sound of a bird of prey swooping down for its victim, ripping though the church, and emptied his gun into the general direction of his enemy, knowing the futility of it.

The sound of the Makarob clicking empty, was shockingly loud in the sudden stillness of the hall, with the echo of his last shot fading.

"Testy, testy." The voice was light, mocking, confident.

Selim grimaced. He didn't even see the Russian change his position. The fucker had clear line of vision on him. Endgame.

"Drop it."

The pistol, now nothing more than an awkward club clattered to the floor.

"Hands."

He locked the fingers behind his head. He should have cut and run. He should have listened his fear.

But he had been so fucking close…

"On the ground."

And Selim smiled. Truly God was great.

***

The muj was good. Mikhail swallowed, feeling the copper taste in his mouth. Must have bitten his tongue at some point. Fuck.

The thin trickle of blood making its way down his cheek was getting stronger. Soon enough it would become a problem. Scalp wounds always bled like a son of a bitch.

But that was for later.

"On the ground."

And the jihadi smiled.

Something was wrong, Mikhail's mind screamed, and his finger tightened on the trigger but it was a century too late.

The Chechen's chest hit the remnants of the floor, moving much too fast and something cracked.

Mikhail blinked and for an absurd second wondered whether the terrorist just committed a truly bizarre form of suicide.

And then the prone body disappeared behind a veil of black mist.

There was no more thinking then, just movement honed to a second nature by hours of training. The recoil of the Beretta was a dim surprise as it always was when he had done it right, the bullets hitting center-mass of where the Chechen's body SHOULD have been.

The clip sliding out, his hands on automatic reflex, disconnected from his mind, slapping in another.

Bullet after bullet smashing into the black cloud that began to resolve itself into a smiling face. Hungry, joyful and never human.

For some reason Mikhail though he heard Illyana scream somewhere far away. And then, ridiculously, he heard Ave Maria echo though the church.

He was till gripping the useless gun as the demon's maw gaped wide and he…

He couldn't s h i f t.

He mustn't!

It was too soon. Too much.

The Spiral blossomed and he was so tired.

So tired…

***

"Almost got fucked like we prom queens, boss." Castle's cheerful voice broke through the static. "But it's done. The Russkies have recovered the data, Vazhin got to slap the FSB around nice and proper. They are still convinced that the info is good. Everyone's happy."

Langstrom pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. He was getting to old for this. But the carefully doctored file, should keep Moscow chasing dead end in their version of the Hounds Project for quite a while."What went wrong?"

"Hell if I know."

The code phrase cut through Langstrom's fatigue and send a shot of adrenaline into his system, chasing away the drowsiness that had ignored the coffee with magnificent contempt.

"We should discuss that then."

"No worries. Be home soon, Mom. Don't wait up."

***

The blade slid smoothly through the blood-red fabric, the oilcloth caressing the stiletto's blade in a process that was almost obscene. Smooth, practiced movement made the dagger dance, its sharpness weaving through the thin ascetic fingers in the dim light of the speeding train's compartment.

The kids across from the blind man gazed in rapt fascination, their mother in a faintly revolted one, equally mesmerized by the trick and unsure how to react to talent coming from a black robed priest.

Matt Murdoch smiled and sheathed the blade.


End file.
